Alex Strohl is a French photographer and author, best known for his landscape and outdoor photography. Strohl is based in Whitefish, Montana. In 2018, XXLPIX ranked him in 12th position in the “Top 100 photographers on the web” list. He authored a book named Alternative Living, published by Blurb in 2015.
Today I will be going over what I have learned after watching Alex Strohl’s first few videos in his workshop. The workshop is located in Mexico and is Strohl’s first workshop that he has filmed and made public (the first one being in Montana).
Video 4:
I personally found this video very interesting as it follows Alex on a Kayak as he searches for picture in a river. He shows you what he brings on adventures like this and how to stay open while taking photos, he suggests when going to places that are popular like a river is to go more towards sunset when there are little to no people, this also plays into that 90% of the time he will shoot his pictures at sunrise and sunset. Again he stresses like he has in previous videos that you want to scout before you take photos, always, this will give you more ideas and really help you get that great shot. He brings up that when shooting underwater you want to put a life jacket under you so you can float, otherwise it wont be very enjoyable.
Video 5:
Cenote
In this video Alex goes to a cenote which is a natural pit resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock, he takes pictures of his two friends in the cenote and gives tips on how to take goof pictures in water locations. He talks about when you are shooting underwater you want to get a dome lens which will get you a split picture of underneath and above the water. He also is able to get the people that work at the cenote to make the cenote all smoky so he can get a picture with the sunlight hitting the smoke, Alex says that when you have an idea you always want to ask because the worst thing that can happen is they say no. Another thing he mentions is that when you are shooting you want to try and find iconic spots to shoot at like the cenote Alex shot at.
Video 6:
In this part of the workshop Alex goes over editing and shows you a photo that he edited himself, at the beginning of the video he says that before editing a photo you want to have a rough idea of what you want to do before editing the photo just like scouting out spots before shooting. You also will not want to bring something out in the photo that isn’t in the actual photo, for example you do not want to bring out a purple and orange sunset when the sky is overcast or a clear blue sky, you don’t want to force things. One last thing while editing is you want to try to edit a over exposed photo, under exposed photo, and a regular photo for practice.
